Apple policy changes for developer

At WWDC 2016, Apple has made three changes to its policy in a bid to attract more developers to its platforms.

The first change came last week where Phil Schiller, the person in charged of the App Store, announced that Apple will open its in-app purchase renewable subscription to all categories of apps. Currently developers can adopt renewable subscriptions only for a few kind of app category, such as magazine app.

The second policy change is with Apple TV apps. Current policy states that all Apple TV apps must support the Apple remote. This is the reason why you do not see many console games being ported to Apple TV, as it takes effort to build for the Apple remote. This restriction will be gone. It is expected we will soon see more games being ported and made available on the Apple TV.

The third policy change is with regards to Mac apps and iCloud. Currently only apps on the Mac App Store is able to build iCloud features into their apps. Apple will relax this policy to allow apps outside of Mac App Store to use iCloud as long as the app is signed by a registered Apple developer. It is doubtful if this change will revert the decisions by many major apps that abandoned the Mac App Store.